Next Elgin Symphony season to highlight Russian composers
The Elgin Symphony Orchestra's 2016-17 season, which will open the weekend of Sept. 17 and 18, promises to be one of musical discovery on several fronts when music director Andrew Grams celebrates his fourth season on the podium.
The ESO's 66th season, which will highlight music by several renowned Russian composers, was introduced Thursday night during a reception and open rehearsal for subscribers and donors. Of special note, the announcement included the unveiling of an artistic initiative titled “Inside the Music with Andrew Grams.”
Patterned after the “Beyond the Score” concerts presented by the Chicago Symphony and similar programs in other cities, “Inside the Music” will devote two of next season's Hemmens concerts to the maestro's verbal and musical exploration of an important piece of music (with the ESO playing key portions of the score).
“I spend a bunch of time at almost every concert talking a little bit about the pieces we're going to be playing, but I never really get to go in depth, as I would really like to,” Grams said. “So, a chance to explain how a piece of music is composed, how it's put together, sort of taking the mystery out of composition, and to play excerpts and things like that, is something I always wanted to do.”
For the upcoming season's “Inside the Music” programs on Nov. 4 and March 31, respectively, Grams has chosen Igor Stravinsky's “Petrouchka” ballet music and Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 4.
Special concert times are 8 p.m. for these two events.
“For ‘Petrouchka,' you can talk about the story, the ballet, the history of the piece, how Stravinsky was able to use music to aurally portray or mirror what's going on onstage,” Grams said. “At the opposite side of the scale, you have the Brahms Fourth, where you are able to ask ‘How do you actually compose a symphony?' This is the main idea, so how is it developed, how is it related to the next movement? It's all of these things, and being able to actually show it in a concert experience — and then, after intermission, to be able to play the whole piece through — I think, is going to give audience something they can't really get anywhere else.”
“Petrouchka” will be part of Grams' other season-long theme of presenting music by Russian composers in seven programs, much like he programmed an American work in each concert this season. He will lead six of those programs and ESO resident conductor Stephen Squires the other, on March 4-5, 2017, headlined by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. On that program, Squires will also lead Aaron Copland's “Billy the Kid” ballet suite and clarinet concerto with guest soloist Alexander Fiterstein.
The season-long Russian theme will begin the opening weekend at Hemmens Cultural Center when Grams conducts Dmitri Shostakovich's “Festive Overture,” Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with guest artist Simone Porter and Sergei Rachmaninoff's “Symphonic Dances.”
Other Russian works scheduled for 2016-17 include Serge Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 with soloist Angelo Xiang Yu on Jan. 7-8, that program also holding Beethoven's Third Symphony (“Eroica”); Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto with soloist Natasha Paremski on April 1-2, 2017; and Modest Mussorgsky's “Pictures at an Exhibition” in the season-ending program of May 6-7, 2017. That concert will also include Ralph Vaughan Williams' “Serenade to Music” (with the Elgin Master Chorale) and Gustav Mahler's song cycle Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”).
The Rachmaninoff concerto will share the program with the Brahms Fourth Symphony, the focus of Grams' “Inside the Music” concert earlier that weekend.
Two pops-oriented concerts are worth special mention. On the weekend of Oct. 7-9 (the Friday concert at Schaumburg's Prairie Center for the Arts), Squires will conduct Charlie Chaplin's own music score for “City Lights,” to be accompanied by a screening of that classic film. While Chaplin is best known for acting and directing, his musical talent is often overlooked, so these concerts will provide an opportunity to experience the complete Chaplin.
Grams will be on the podium for the other concert featuring lighter fare, an all-George Gershwin program on Jan. 28-29, 2017, in which he will be joined by pianist Yana Reznik for the ever-popular “Rhapsody in Blue” along with the lesser-known “Second Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra.” Grams will also conduct the “Cuban Overture,” “Lullaby for Strings” and “An American in Paris.”
The annual holiday concerts will be held at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 10, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11, and will be conducted by Squires.
More details on the 2016-17 ESO season will be posted at elginsymphony.org. Renewal packets for season subscribers will be available at this weekend's concerts (7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday), along with applications for potential new subscribers. Single-concert tickets go on sale this spring.